The DresdenVerse

California Winter (Part 1)

Miles brought a huge contingent to cheer Vinnie on and he really appreciated it. The fight went… strange. First round was normal with no clear winner, but Jasmin, Miles, and Kevin all noticed that Vinny was getting sluggish and tired a lot earlier than he should have. Meanwhile, his opponent, Mickey McGrath was kicking his ass and slipping out of every hold that Vinnie put him in. By the third round, Vinnie just looked winded. In the last minute of round 3, there looked to be a turn around, but Mickey pulled off an imposible move and flipped Vinnie onto his collarbone, shattering it. With the cheers and jeers of the crew however, Mickey got up and beat Mickey with win by decision. He was quickly rushed by Chuck D to the Kaiser Permanente half a mile up Broadway.

After wading through the crowds Jasmin, Kevin, and Miles went to visit on their injured friend. He seemed fine, saying that although it hurts to breathe, it’s not nearly as bad as being shot with a SAW. He asked the group to go check on Bruce and promptly went to sleep. The team had their suspicions about the fight, but were glad that Vinnie was okay.

Scene 2: Dirty’s Detailing (5/5xp)

On the way to Vinnie’s, a heavy march rain started. Jasmin approached the door to unlock the deadbolt and noticed that it didn’t have any resistance – indicating the door was no longer locked. They listened carefully and heard rustling sounds in Vinnie’s upstairs apartment and from the office. Kevin rushed the office while Jasmin veiled herself from sight and sound. Kevin surprised one of them and in his panic, he took the nailgun in his hand and nailed Kevin’s foot to the floor. Miles came and backed him up with both guns drawn. Meanwhile Jasmin headed upstairs just as a second perpetrator came out with a slice of pizza in hand. This did not make Kevin any happier and he told him to stay put. As if things couldn’t get any worse, they heard the sound of a fire door opening and the sprinklers going off. Kevin TK’ed the nail out of his foot and went up toward the pizza eating guy. Meanwhile Miles secured a now very scared kid and Jasmin went after the 3rd one. Pizza guy ended up bolting leaving his apparent brother to Miles. Kevin went after him, calling forth a small bit of magic to knock him off of his mountain bike. Jasmin went after what was apparently a Free-Runner specialist as the jumps and climbs he was making were more than enough to lose Jasmin. Jasmin let Faumnach lose and he eventually saw that Mr. Parkour put what looked like a book into a USPS box and throw it into “one of those blue boxes.” After much coaxing and an hour of searching, Faumnach finally showed Jasmin which mailbox the package was dumped.

After some questioning, the team had some names and motivations. The one in the office was a scrawny little Berkeley panhandler that was probably under 18 named Zill. He was working with his two brothers, the big one with the pizza was Widdy while the guy that got away was Twiz. Zill expained that their D-bag dad asked them to “grab the oldest book in fighter’s house and mail it.” The box just appeared the next day when they woke up. Widdy told the crew that him and Zill were the distraction while Twiz was “the smart one” that could most likely find it. It was obvious that they didn’t quite understand their natures as being changelings. Miles called the cops on them and decided that it was getting late and time to sleep. On the box with the book, they found a PO box and started a trace on it.

Scene 3: How to Plan Your Weekend (8/8xp)

When the crew woke up, Veronica called with the owner of the PO box – Mickey McGrath. So the crew decided to take a visit to Mickey’s gym and invite him out to dinner. They pretty much called him out on cheating, but found that he wasn’t an overall bad guy and was just willing to take any advantage he had. It seemed he may have been ogre or troll blooded changeling and he had a good amount of court goodwill with Winter. He was able to drop a name though – the fight promoter Haley Silver, who also gave him the Hoarfrost Spine that let him escape grapples easier. The team warned him to not agree to favors with the Winter Court, but he seemed perfectly aware and willing to deal with the dangers.

Miles went to check on Vinnie at the hospital again to ask him if he could translate the Arabic. However, when he got there, the front desk nurse said he had checked himself out. Everyone figured he went back to his place, but when they went there, he hadn’t quite arrived.

Now the teams stuck with a conundrum – they have a book that’s apparently important to some Faeries and Vinnie’s missing. Knowing that even with a broken collar bone, Vinnie could take care of himself, so the crew called up their contacts in the White Council to see if there was a local translator of Arabic. Central command hooked them up with Professor Hyneman, a professor of renaissance studies in Berkeley. After a soulgaze that left Miles confident and Professor Hyneman scared out of his mind, they left the book with him to translate. He picked out a few of the Arabic passages, and they look very much like a pen pal of DaVinci’s recounting how he found what is very obviously Esperrachius. (Why would the Faeries want a book about Esperacchius?)

Things just got heavy, so Miles went back to the hospital to make a pyshometry reading on Vinnie’s hospital bed and found that he was probably drugged to be knocked out and someone made to look like him, veiled Vinnie as a sweatshirt and left.

Now the team’s a little worried and Jasmin used a powerful contract of Faumnach’s – diviner’s madness. He was able to ask 2 questions: Where will Vinnie be at 6:00pm and where will Twiz be at 7:00pm. Twiz was easy, he’ll be outside of Venus – a bar in Berkeley at 7:00. Faumnach then said the strangest thing about Vinnie – “He’ll be at the hospital. This one only had 3 walls and no roof though.” Everyone quickly deduced he’s being held at some play or studio set somewhere. Simple tracking spells also seemed to have fouled up when using Vinnie’s recovered sweatshirt as the focus.

The next steps now it seems are: find Twiz at 7:00 in Berkeley and talk to Haley on Sunday.